


The Girl in the Grey Space

by hopefuleigh



Series: The Space Between [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Darcy Lewis Feels, Dreamsharing, F/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Steve Rogers Feels, time travel (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-04 18:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21202280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopefuleigh/pseuds/hopefuleigh
Summary: Steve only ever dreams of the grey space, and the girl he meets there every night.





	1. Where is more Important than When

**Author's Note:**

> First time dipping my toe into this fandom and this pairing, with a soulmate AU trope providing for lots of freedom.
> 
> There will be seven parts, and all are written and waiting to be edited and posted. All told from Steve's POV. Mostly vignettes, not necessarily in chronological order. Time is fluid in this world. Hope you enjoy it.

**Part One**

_ “Do you ever think about why?” she asks, her voice soft. He turns his head to meet her eyes; she is staring at him in that intense way she gets sometimes. They’re lying on their backs, staring up at the grey expanse of sky above them. _

_ “Sometimes, I guess. But really, why does it matter? You’re here and I’m here, and since we’re always together, I’m not complaining about why,” he answers, reaching a hand out to brush a stray hair from her face. _

_ “I don’t mean why  _ this _ ,” she says suddenly, waving her wrist and flashing the dark script of his name. He catches her wrist, gently pulling it towards him. His thumb brushes over the dark letters written there, and the thrill that spikes through his stomach is almost overwhelming. But so it is every time he touches her. “Just why… here. Why do we always end up here? It doesn’t seem fair.” _

_ “A lot of things aren’t fair,” he says with a shrug.  _

_ “All day, the only thing I think about is how long before I can fall asleep and see you again,” she says, and the tightness around his heart is too intense, he has trouble breathing.  _

_ He turns her wrist and brings the inner side, the part where his handwriting is a dark slash against her white skin, and touches his lips to it. _

_ “Me too, Darcy.” _

***

He could only ever see his Mark when he was in the grey space, the void he went to when he dreamed. She noticed it first, pointing it out with an excited shout, on the eve of his seventeenth birthday. The girl in the grey space, the person he met every night during what he assumed were his dreams, night after night, since they were both children.

“You have a Mark! Can I see it?” she asks, her eyes big and bright in her pure happiness for him. All his friends received their Marks much earlier, to the point that he was certain he’d end up one of the Unmatched. But here, with her beside him, it is faint, hardly visible but it’s there and it’s real.

He can’t read the writing, the silvery script hard impossible to read in the dim light surrounding them. He holds out his wrist for her to inspect, and she runs a finger over the inscription. With a small gasp, she looks up at him, shocked.

“What is it?” he asks. Darcy was a constant in his life - his dream life, in any case. He had memorized every expression, every look in her eye, everything about her. He could read her like a book.

Her face is frozen for a moment, but then something shifts and she blinks, shaking her head a bit.

“I can’t read it,” she answered, with a casual shrug, dropping his hand like it was too hot to touch.

She is lying to him.

***

They always appeared in the grey space in whatever clothes they each fell asleep in. It becomes a way to mark the passing seasons where each of them were, to understand a little bit more about the where and when she was.

The night before he leaves for Camp Lehigh, he puts on his brand new uniform before settling into sleep. His body is electric with nerves and excitement, but his shoulders feel lighter than they have in a long time - the promise that he’d get a shot to do his part.

He finds her in the far corner of the grey space, sitting cross legged with her eyes closed, seemingly concentrating really hard.

“Practicing my French conjugations. I have an exam tomorrow morning,” she says without opening an eye. He sits across from her and waits patiently. 

She finally opens her eyes, and the shock registers on her face immediately. Her normally pale face is now almost white, her eyes wide and dark and suddenly very shiny in the dim light of the grey space. It takes her a moment as she seems to be struggling with her words.

“You made it,” she says, her voice cracking as she reaches for his hand. 

“I did,” he says. She’s staring at the uniform, and he sits up straight as she continues to scrutinize, a warm feeling of pride washing over him as  _ she _ , of all people, sees him in a way he’s always wanted. But she’s not sharing his excitement. There is something wrong, something deeply, tragically wrong.

Her hand is cold in his, and he squeeze tight, trying to warm it up.

“I know  _ when _ you are now,” she says softly, mournfully. A large fat tear rolls down the left side of her face. They figured out pretty early on that things were different in their individual waking lives, that maybe they existed in different times. But that was as far as they ever went, because the  _ here _ was so much more real and important.

He doesn’t ask and she doesn’t tell. Three more tears run slowly down her face, he counts each of them, and then she sniffs, wipes her eyes and punches him on the shoulder, instantly transforming back into his bright, playful Darcy.

“So, soldier, you finally made it, huh? Care to tell me how you managed to pull that off?”


	2. Practice Makes Perfect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's always had trouble saying no to Darcy.

**Part Two**

Time was really fluid in the grey space. It generally moved in a linear direction. They were usually aging at the same time, in the same direction. So that meant that he was usually a few years older than her. Once in awhile, they were the same age. Twice, she was quite a bit older than him, and she loved to remind of that when he took to lecturing her about one thing or another, a bad habit he tried to shake.

“You are not my Jiminy Cricket, okay? You’re my friend, which means you need to be supportive of my attempts to fight The Man, so quit it,” she would always say with an exaggerated eye roll whenever he chided her, no matter how gently, about the little acts of rebellion she would tell him about.

“Who is Jiminy Cricket?” he would always ask, causing her to collapse backwards in a show of contempt for his lack of pop culture knowledge.

That night, she is giddy with excitement, dancing around him and loudly singing the lyrics to a song he’s never heard of.

“What’s got you all worked up, kid?” he asks with a fond smile when she stops bouncing around enough for her to realize he’s joined her.

“Big night tomorrow, Stevie! Big night. Huge!” she exclaims, dropping down the ground across from him, sitting with her legs crossed. “It’s our first school dance! And I’m going with Jack Clemmons, the funniest guy in our grade.”

“Isn’t Jack the guy who kept shooting rubber bands at you? Didn’t you get in trouble for smackin’ him last week?” Steve asks with a frown he hopes is big-brotherly.

“Yeah, turns out he wanted to ask me to be his date but was too nervous and was trying to get my attention. So we’re going to the dance together, and Lindsay Sinclair said that the reason he wanted to ask  _ me _ is because the last song they play is  _ always _ a really long slow dance and Jack’s older brother told him that it’s the best time to kiss the girl you’re dancing with!” she exclaims. “So that means he wants to kiss me.”

“The important thing is whether you want to kiss him,” Steve says, feeling a bit bothered by the direction this conversation has taken. He’s jealous, a smoldering bitter feeling was brewing in his belly. He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt as young and carefree as Darcy looks right now.

“I think so,” she says, with a casual shrug. “How do you really know if you want to kiss someone unless you try it first?”

They sit in silence for a moment.

“Hey Steve?”

“Yeah, Darcy.”

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“ _ Obviously _ I’m talking about kissing,” she answers, exasperated. She leans forward, looking around her as if someone might be spying on a big secret she was about to tell. “I told Lindsay that I have, but the truth is, I haven’t kissed anyone yet.”

“Oh, I see. So this could be your first kiss,” Steve says, trying hard to keep his voice steady. He thinks for a moment about what he wants to say to the wide-eyed, innocent kid sitting across from him. He leans back on his arms, keeping his voice light and casual. “Kissing is real nice, Darcy. With the right person, it’s a lot of fun too.”

“What was your first kiss like?”

Steve laughs.

“Awkward. One of the neighbourhood girls, Ruby, wanted to practice before trying to kiss the boy she was actually sweet on. We laughed the whole way through, could barely even call it a kiss,” he recounts, laughing and shaking his head.

“Oh really?” Darcy asks. There is a glint in her eye, and Steve knows her well enough to know that probably means trouble. “Practice?”

“Darcy…Don’t get be getting ideas here,” he warns. She lunges forward, grabbing his shoulders.

“Don’t you see how perfect this is?” she demands. He shifts away from her, sitting up on his knees. He’s always found it really hard to say no to Darcy, but he can see where this is headed and he’s knows he needs to put his foot down. “Come on, Steve! How many girls get the chance to practice for their first kiss, like actually? Because I can kiss  _ you  _ now and it doesn’t even count! Plus we’re friends and you’ve done it before, loads of times I bet, so it really is  _ perfect _ .”

“It’s not perfect, Darcy. I don’t want to do that,” he says, his voice firm. She crosses her arms, glaring at him for a moment. He always finds it really hard to say no to Darcy, but there are times he can manage to get her to back down.

“Fine.”

This isn’t going to be one of those times.

“I mean, it’s fine if you  _ really  _ want to leave my first kiss in the hands of an inexperienced teenaged boy who will probably try to feel me up behind the school next week, that’s totally fine. You know, that’s totally better than my best friend in the entire universe,” she says, in that perfectly-yet-totally-manipulative tone of voice she gets sometimes. He sighs deeply, looking away.

He looks back at her and meets her eyes. She mouths the word ‘please’ at him with a soft grin, and he feels his resolve start to dissolve, and he sighs again. A wide smile cracks across her face as she realizes that he’s going to give in.

Something occurs to him.

“How old are you right now?” he asks, his eyes narrow. She contemplates for a moment and he can feel the lie before she even says it. “Darcy,  _ tell the truth _ . I don’t want to be a creep here.”

“Stevie, you couldn’t be a creep if you tried,” she laughs. “I’m fourteen. But I’ll be fifteen in a month. How old are you?”

“Old enough to know better,” he mutters to himself, shifting so he’s sitting closer to her. “But not old enough to get me out of this.”

“I’m not like a troll or something, you don’t have to act like it’s this big  _ horrible  _ thing I’m forcing you to do,” she complains. “I’m smart and cute and funny and any guy would be super lucky to be my first kiss!”

“It’s not like that, Darcy. It’s kind of a big responsibility, if you think about it. Don’t you want this to matter more? You should like the guy you’re kissing,” he says, placing his hand on hers and looking down at their fingers as they lace together. The words hang in the air, heavy, and it takes him a moment before he’s able to meet her eyes. He looks up, and her big eyes are looking back at him, soft and bright and blinking quickly, like she’s fighting tears. She licks her lips, a sign that she’s nervous, and swallows.

“I like you, Steve,” she whispers, her voice gravelly as she’s trying not to cry. “I like you the best, but… I’m not sure if you’re real.”

He gathers her into his arms, pulling her into his lap, holding her tight as she wraps her arms around his neck.

“I’m as real as you are to me,” he says into her hair. “I like you best too. I don’t know why I see you every night when I fall asleep, but I’m very glad I have you.”

He holds her, and it’s so quiet in the grey space that he hears her pulse beat in her throat near his ear. The rhythm is soothing and he concentrates on it as he makes a decision. 

_ He always had trouble saying no to her. _

He pulls away, and she shifts back to kneel facing him. He wipes a stray tear off her cheek and smiles at her, the sight of her watery eyes tugging at him.

“Alright kid, let’s do this. But you gotta close your eyes, I can’t do this with you lookin’ at me,” he says. “Besides, it’s a lot nicer when your eyes are closed.”

She nods and closes her eyes, smiling expectantly. He stares at her, unsure and debating his next move. One of her eyes pops open.

“What are you waiting for?” she asks, impatiently.

“Just give me a minute!”

He cups her face with his left hand, letting his thumb caress the soft skin by her ear. Leaning forward, he angles his head just so and, taking a deep breath, he presses his lips against hers, soft and gentle. He lingers for a moment, before he pulls away. She opens her eyes as he moves away and lowers his hand, dropping it down beside him.

She is staring at him, blinking slowly.

“What?” he asks hoarsely, feeling prickly over the analytical way she’s staring at him, assessing him.

“Is that it?” she asks. “All that drama, and our lips barely even touched?”

“Well, that’s like a beginner level kiss, okay?” he huffs defensively.

“Don’t get me wrong, it was really nice, but not really what I was expecting. For the big deal everyone has been making of it, there’s not a lot to it, is there?” she says, shrugging very nonchalantly.

“There is a lot more to it, but that’s for… after you’ve been kissing someone for a bit,” he tries to explain, feeling his face start to burn. “You can’t just jump right in, go all-in on a girl without some kind of build-up.”

He can see the question on the tip of her tongue, knows what’s coming next. He moves closer, so that her face is only a breadth away from his. His eyes meet hers, and then he looks down at her mouth.

“Build-up is very important, you see,” he says, brushing a stray hair from her face and leaving his hand tangled in the mess of curls at the back of her neck. “A light easy kiss first, see how she reacts. Take a breath, take a moment.”

“And then?” she says so softly he can barely hear her, his face so close to hers he can feel the movement of her lips against his cheek.

“Move closer, but slowly, make sure she doesn’t want to move away.”

“And if she doesn’t?” 

“Pull her close. It’s much nicer when she’s really close,” he says, wrapping his other hand around her waist and pulling her back into his lap, pulling her tight so she’s right up against his chest. 

Steve knows he’s not a big guy, knows that all his friends tower over him and consider him a pipsqueak. But with her in his lap, face hovering just above his, ready and waiting for his next move, he feels like a real man, maybe for the first time in his life. It’s the way she’s looking at him, with a knowing trust that she’s in good hands, the responsibility of it.

“And then?” she breathes. His hands cupping either side of her face, he gently leads her face down towards his. Their lips slant together, and this time, he applies just a bit more pressure, and then moves his lips against hers. Her mouth opens slightly, and he slips his tongue inside, softly and slow, and gently explores her mouth.

That would have been the end of it, he would have pulled away, would have ended things there. But she makes a soft sound at the back of her throat, a quiet little hum that lights a fire in his belly and makes him forget for a moment, forget that she’s young and inexperienced, that he’s the older, responsible one. He pulls her close, deepening the kiss as desire sweeps over him, pounding through his veins. It’s a searing few moments of being lost in the sensation of her sweet mouth, the friction of their tongues, the feel of her body pressed against him, before he regains control and breaks away. He presses his lips to hers again, two, three times, before resting his forehead against hers.

Her eyes are half closed, and they’re both a little breathless.

“Whoa,” she says and he can barely hear her over the roaring in his ears.

“Yeah,” he says. He can’t stop staring at her mouth, has to force himself to look away, because all he can think about is how he wants to kiss her again, and not stop, and how can things ever go back to normal now that he has crossed this line?

“You were right,” she says as she slowly moves again, climbing out of his lap. She sprawls out on the floor, lying on her back, pressing her hands to her cheeks, which are very flushed. 

He forces himself to take a deep breath, to calm down, before he stretches out beside her, leaning over to see her face.

“About what?” he asks.

She smiles at him, a cheeky knowing look.

“Kissing is real nice.”


	3. A Civics Lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Red lips and study notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter is about as fluffy as this fic gets, I'm afraid. Time to start turning up the angst.

After that, Steve creates an invisible line inside his mind. Darcy is his friend. Darcy is the sometimes annoying figment of his dreaming brain. Darcy is to him what Bucky’s kid sister is, someone he enjoys spending time with but should never touch in anything other than a big-brotherly kind of way.

Darcy is his goddamned dream girl and now he can’t see her any other way.

Can’t stop staring at her mouth. Can’t stop wanting to make her smile and laugh. Can’t stop himself from offering his shoulder for her to lean on just so he can feel her next to him. Can’t stop thinking about how beautiful she is, even when he’s awake.

He sketches her features and then rips up the drawings. He asks Bucky to set him up with one of the girls he knows, takes her out a few times, enjoys it when things get hot and heavy with her in the alley behind the diner on the corner. That girl occupies part of his brain for awhile as he remembers how it felt when she put her hands, and mouth, certain places, but it’s not enough to burn away the memory of the sweet simple kiss he shared with the girl in the grey space.

Darcy acts like nothing has changed.

She starts wearing a dark red lipstick, calls it her signature colour. She is sixteen and deeply cares about what her friends think, even Steve. She asks him for his opinion the first time she appears with her perfectly painted red lips, confessing that she made sure to fall asleep lying straight on her back so it wouldn’t get mussed before she could show him.

“I was trying to go for the easy casual French girl red, you know? But I think this works?” she asks, biting her bottom lip uncertainly as she stares at him. They’re the same height now, she no longer has to look up at him. He misses the way that feels, having this annoying kid look up to him, literally and figuratively.

It’s an electric shock to his brain, the lush red lips on the face of the girl who now occupies his days and nights, and he can barely speak. He nods and recovers as her face falls.

“Real nice, Darcy. You look a picture,” he manages to say, and hopes she doesn’t notice how hoarse his voice is. 

From then on, he starts training himself to focus on her eyes instead of her mouth when she’s talking to him. 

***

Somewhere around the time that girls stop giving him the time of day, stop seeing him as Bucky’s cute friend who is fun to flirt with, stop finding him charming and funny and stop accepting his offers for dates, Darcy discovers guys. And guys discover Darcy.

It causes a burning flash in his chest every time she mentions one.

One night, she hands him a stack of crumpled notes from her Civics class, asking him to quiz her. They discovered, after a few experiments, that not only did they always appear in the grey space in whatever they fell asleep wearing, but that if they put things in their pockets, it would come along with them. For Steve, that meant a little notebook and pencil so he could doodle; for Darcy, who was obsessed with making good grades with an eye towards college, it meant studying.

“Can you quiz me? Stupid Joey Moore wouldn’t leave me alone during class and the teacher kicked us both out, and now I’ve fallen asleep while studying,” she complains, dropping down to the floor in front of him. “I really want to ace this class.”

“Why was he bugging you?” Steve asks, frowning. This wasn’t the first time she’s told him about problems with guys in her classes.

“Ugh,” she answers, waving her hand dismissively. “Some jerk has been spreading rumours about me all around school and Joey, because he has the intelligence of an amoeba, believed it and decided to act on it. Quiz please.”

His eyes scan over her notes, looking for a question to ask her, but his mind is stuck on what she just said.

“What kind of rumours?” he asks, setting aside the crumbled papers to focus on her. She sighs, in that slightly petulant way she can get sometimes, a long heavy sigh that indicates her annoyance.

“So, I kind of made out with a guy at a party. Totally harmless, right?” she shrugs, nonchalantly. For the past three years, Darcy has treated Steve to many accounts of her various “make out conquests” as she called them. It kind of twists up his stomach, these details she shares, when she tells him about the latest boy she’d decided to kiss. “Well Shelley Jackson saw and because she hates me because I beat her out for the English award last year, so she told everyone a huge lie about me. So now a bunch of guys think I’m easy and will sleep with them if they pay any attention to me at all.”

That’s when he notices the cut and bruises across the knuckle of her right hand.

“Darcy, what did you do?” he asks, picking up her hand and tugging it closer so he could have a better look. She sighs deeply again.

“How come your question isn’t ‘oh Darcy what happened to you hand’? Why do you think I am the one that did something wrong? Whatever, it was not my fault. Which is what I told the teacher... and the principal... and then my parents after they found out I had been suspended, zero tolerance policy bullshit,” she mumbles, pulling her hand away. “I was defending myself, Steve. Joey grabbed my breast and tried to stick his hand down my kilt. In the middle of class! So... I decked him.”

“You hit him?”

“He wasn’t listening when I told him off. And yeah, now I’m suspended and it’s on my permanent record, which  _ sucks  _ for my college applications, and my hand hurts and I don’t even know how I’m going to write my Civics midterm when I can’t actually hold a pen right now, but ...like, if I didn’t and let him get away with it, what if he tries it on another girl?” she asks. “So, I don’t know, I was defending myself but kind of also anyone else he decides to try that with.”

He knows her so well, had shared this grey space with her since she popped into his dreams at three years old, but she still surprises him. He’s starstruck by her, the defiant set to her jaw as she explains, the fire in her eyes and the way her voice quavers just a little bit, just enough for him to know that she’s uncertain how he’ll react. She believes what she did was right, but it  _ matters _ to her that he agrees with her, that he’ll take her side.

“You are incredible, Darcy,” he says. He turns over her hand and presses a light kiss into the centre of her palm. Her eyes are fixed to his as he raises his head, and that is when they both see it.

There is a dark slash of handwriting across the underside of her wrist. She yanks her hand back from him with a gasp, holding her wrist up in front of her face, taking a good long look at her Soulmark for the first time.

Steve’s stomach is churning as she watches her face process the information, suddenly feeling like there isn’t enough air for his lungs to breathe anymore.  _ This can’t be this can’t be this can’t be _ , his brain chants. His Mark was faint and illegible in the dim light of the grey space, and completely non-existent in his waking life. Darcy’s, what he saw of it, was dark and clear, the writing fully legible.

When she lowers her arm away from her face, she cradles it in her lap, keeping the Mark hidden. Her eyes are bright and blinking, and there’s a mixture of emotions on her face that he can’t read.

“You have a Mark,” he says lightly, trying to summon the same excitement on her behalf that she’d displayed for him when they discovered the flash of silver on his wrist.

“I do,” she says. “I didn’t notice it or feel anything earlier today. You know how they say you can feel it, like burn or tingle or whatever? I didn’t feel any of that. I wonder if it’ll be like yours, and we can only see it here.”

He hesitates, trying to quell the rising panic. Why had it never occurred to him that Darcy would surely receive her Mark soon? He’d wondered, on sleepless nights that kept him tossing and turning too much that he didn’t go to the grey space, what would happen to their weird little world when she met her soulmate, her real one. Someone whose existence she would never have to question.

He works up the nerve.

“Can I see it?” he asks, his normally deep voice cracking a bit.

She stares at him for a moment, long enough that he almosts takes it back and tells her to forget it, but then she smiles slowly and nods, holding out her hand for him to take.

It’s his writing.  _ It’s his writing.  _ His name on her wrist. 

He struggles for words as Darcy looks at him expectantly, the passing moments pounding in his ears as he processes this life-changing piece of news.

“Me?” he finally forces out.

It’s hard to see, hard to take anything in, but he notices vaguely that something’s changed on Darcy’s face, but her smile is frozen in place.

“Unless you’ve drastically improved that blocky hard-to-read nonsense you call handwriting overnight, yes, you,” she says.

Another palpable moment passes, and he’s struggling. Struggling to feel worthy, struggling not to feel like this is a cruel mistake and he’s going to end up alone even with his name written across her wrist. He wants to take her, hold her, tell her how it’s all he’s ever wanted but never felt he had the  _ right _ . 

The silver script, the elusive name he can’t read written across his own wrist, burns and he is stuck. They both have soulmates, but until they knew whose name was spelled out in Steve’s Mark, there was a chance they weren’t a Match.

“I wonder if you’ll be able to see it when you’re awake,” he says, and then he can’t help himself as he draws a finger over the swirl of his name.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll let you know tomorrow night,” she says, drawing her hand away. Her voice is tight, upset. He should tell her, tell her all the things running through his mind. But the words won’t come out. He’s stuck.

She picks up the crumpled notes.

“Midterm is in two days, my first day back after my suspension is over. Quiz me?” she asks.

The next time he sees her, she’s wearing a dark leather bracelet around her wrist, blocking the sight of his writing. She doesn’t mention if she sees her Mark when she’s awake or if it only exists here, with him in the grey space.


	4. I Carry Your Heart With Me (I Carry It In My Heart)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A token can be worth more than words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from the e e cummings poem of the same names, with apologies to the poet for altering the punctuation.

Darcy is very worried when he sees her. He lets out the breath he’s been holding, that he didn’t know he was holding, as she jumps to her feet and rushes to him. She takes one look at his face and pulls him into her arms. He buries his face into her neck, grateful as he feels the weight of the world lift off his shoulders, just enough so that he feels like he can breathe again.

It’s the night after he buries his mother. He’d been unable to sleep for days, first as he kept an anxious watch over his sick mother, and then too stricken with grief and anxiety to settle in. But now she was at peace, next to his father. After he’d bedded down on the couch cushions on Bucky’s floor, he was frayed and exhausted... and desperate for her. Sleep mercifully found him quickly and brought him to her.

“It’s done,” he says. “It was peaceful, I suppose. Now she’s with my dad.”

She brushes away a tear that had rolled down his cheek with her thumb and presses her forehead against his.

“I  _ hate  _ that I wasn’t there for you, Steve. I knew… I just knew when I didn’t see you two nights ago, and I was  _ stuck  _ here and you were alone,” she says. “But you’re not alone. Never.”

“All I have to do is fall asleep,” he says with a weak smile, but the words are bitter in his mouth as he speaks. He wants her for  _ real _ , in the daylight, in his waking life. But she’s a carefree college student from a different time, and he all he can count on is their dreams together in the grey space.

“I’ve been thinking about that. Can we try a small experiment?” she says softly. She reaches out and begins to unbutton his shirt, shooting him a bashful look as her fingers fumble on the third one.

“Sorry, I’ve never undone someone else’s buttons,” she says, and he sees her blushing for perhaps the first time. She pushes aside his shirt, revealing the white undershirt he always wore. She reaches into her pocket.

“I don’t know if this will still be here when you wake up, but I thought we could try,” she says, holding out a small flat gold-coloured object. “I found it in a vintage shop and got my dad to help me weld it to a safety pin.”

She’s holding out a small oval locket. She opens it, showing him inside.

“You only showed me the one picture of her, but it looked like it might fit inside. But in case you’d rather keep the photo as it is, I had her name engraved inside it. You can pin it here,” she says, pressing a finger to his chest over his heart, “under your shirt. You know, so something of hers is always with you.”

She examines his face, biting a lip nervously.

“I’m sorry, was this a bad idea? I just… I wanted to do something and I kind of panicked and latched on to this idea without thinking it through all the way,” she explains. “We’ve never tried to keep anything of each other’s before, so it may not work out… and then you don’t have to wear it ever again.

He places his hand over hers, pressing it down until its resting against his chest.

“Can you help me put it on?” he asks. He can’t see, his vision swimming as he struggles to hold back the tears burning his eyes. She does, after wiping away another stray tear, one that escaped.

When he wakes up the next morning, the locket is exactly where she had pinned it, under his shirt and over his heart.

_ She was real. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story doesn't move in a chronological order, so if you're having trouble following what happens when and in what order, please let me know in the comments and I'll add it to the Chapter Notes for the next chapter. Thank you for reading!
> 
> Also, side note - when you're trying to figure out what to say to a grieving friend or loved one and you really don't know what to do, and you feel very unsure of any tokens or meaningful gifts and think maybe they won't like it -- ignore that instinct and do it. I mean, within reason. Grief is lonely and isolating and the awkwardness of others really makes it that much more difficult. Overcome the awkward and listen to your first instinct! End of PSA.


	5. I Can See Your True Colours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine year old Darcy is a philosopher.

“Hey Steve?”

“Yeah Darcy?”

“Why do you think this place is so grey? I mean, why grey of all the colours?”

“No idea, kid. Maybe we have bad imaginations, and that’s the best our minds could come up with.”

She’s about nine years old and he’s fourteen and loves calling her ‘kid’, is amused by how much it annoys her. They’re lying on their backs in opposite directions, heads together. She’d flopped to the ground dramatically when he saw her, frustrated.  _ It’s just so boring here sometimes _ , she had complained.

“That’s sad. Grey is not the colour I get when I think of you,” she says.

“That’s good, I suppose. What colour do you get?” he asks, curious.

“Blue.”

“That’s not much better than grey!” he protests. “No one wants to be blue.”

“Not a  _ sad  _ blue. A bright blue. Like the sky on a clear day, you know? It makes you feel good when you see it,” she explains, and he know she’s rolling her eyes at his reaction without being able to see her face. “What colour am I?”

“Orange,” he answers without having to think about it at all, and she groans.

“That’s terrible! Orange is the worst colour there is!” she cries, sitting up. “Can’t I be something cool? Like pink or lime green?”

“Nope, you’re orange. Like sunrise orange,” he says definitively.

“Not cool, Steve. Not cool.”

They’re silent for a few minutes, and he smiles when he hears her take a deep breath, knows she’s getting ready to speak again. Some nights, silence really bothers her and she has an almost pathological need to fill it.

“Do you know that most people have real dreams?” she says. He sits up, facing her.

“This isn’t a real dream?”

“No, like, they dream about things  _ happening _ . They dream about falling, or walking down the street and a dog starts talking to them, or they have nightmares and wake up all freaked out,” she explains, animated.

“And being stuck with an annoying kid like you every night isn’t a nightmare for me?” he asks with a wink. She shoves his shoulder playfully.

“Seriously though. Why don’t we dream about real things?” she asks. Nine year old Darcy is a philosopher, full of questions about reality and this little dream world they share. 

“Why are you so sure I’m not real?” he asks, and reaches out to pinch her arm lightly. She yelps, but he knows it’s mostly for show. He’d never hurt her. “See, I’m very real.”

“You’re real to my  _ brain _ , I guess. But do you actually even exist? Or do I just have crazy recurring dreams about the same guy every night, and if so, why is my brain so  _ boring _ ?”

“Hey, why do you assume that you’re the one that’s real? Maybe you’re just a dream my brain made up!” he protests.

“Whatever, you don’t get it. I think we’re being robbed of cool dreams. All we get is grey grey grey,” she complains.

“And blue,” he says, patting her on the shoulder. “Don’t forget, I’m bright blue.”

“And orange. Those colours don’t even go together!” she sighs heavily, and he laughs.

“Not true! Besides, there could be worse things in life, kid, than colours not matching.”

“Steve?”

“Yeah Darcy?”

“You’re being a bit of a Jiminy Cricket again. Can you knock it off and just let me be annoyed?” she asks, and he laughs.

“I ain’t never heard of a cricket acting as someone’s conscience,” he says. “Should I be insulted that you think I’m like a cartoon insect?”

“Well, you do kind of look like one!” He scoffs, but she just laughs at him, a big, uncontrolled laugh.

  
_ Sunrise orange _ , he thinks as her laughter echoes through the empty void, filling all the spaces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a particular shade of grey that video editors paint their work spaces, particularly if they're working in colour correction, because it helps the eye to see the truest colours.
> 
> That is the inspiration behind this chapter, and the reasons the 'grey space' is grey. Thanks for reading. Two more parts to come!


	6. You Make Her Promises You Don't Want to Make

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is THE big chapter. I'll be posting the last one ASAP after this is posted. 
> 
> Because the 'vignettes' that make up this story aren't told in chronological order, and some details become very important, here is the order of events depicted in previous chapters as Darcy and Steve experience them:  
\- The "What colour am I? conversation  
\- First kiss  
\- Red lipstick  
\- Steve's Soul Mark  
\- Darcy's Soul Mark  
\- The locket  
\- She sees him in his army uniform for the first time

Things change after they find his name written on her wrist. Darcy is distant. Friendly as ever, warm as sunshine, but there’s a tightness behind it, almost as if it’s forced. Gone are the deep philosophical questions, the intense conversations where she reveals her serious side.

She starts college, and he barely sees her for awhile, as she starts staying out all night and sleeping through most of her days.

“It’s just a bit of freshman partying,” she says, waving dismissively at Steve’s concern. She’s pale and tired, dark circles under her eyes, looking worn out in a way his usually carefree girl has never been before. “I’ll settle down in a week or two.”

The nights after he first shows her his uniform, the night she cried when she told him she knew now what time he was in, he catches her staring at him. She’s quiet as he tells her about training camp. It’s a weird change to their dynamic, he the one excitedly recounting his days while she sat and listened in friendly silence.

He tells her about jumping on the grenade, and she closes her eyes as if there was a pain somewhere deep inside her.

“Of course you would do that, Steve,” is all she says, her voice soft and quiet.

It’s the night before the procedure, as Dr. Erskine calls it. After the doctor leaves him, it takes hours before he drifts off, and when his eyes open again, he’s in the grey space. Alone.

He sits, glad he brought his small notebook with him. He takes it out of his pocket, and begins to doodle, but most of his attention is focused on listening for Darcy.

A soft moan catches his attention. Darcy is sitting up, holding her head like it aches. Her hair is a tangled mess around her shoulders, and she looks up at him with red eyes, squinting. And then a thought crosses her mind, and she looks down at herself, and lets out a loud yelp.

“Oh my god, I fell asleep,” she cries out, whipping her body around to turn away from him. “I can’t believe I fell asleep like this. Just don’t - don’t look at me!”

She’s wearing nothing but a pair of underwear, and he catches a quick glimpse of her pale skin as she maneuvers herself from his view. He looks away and can hear her cursing as she huddles into herself, trying to hide the rest of her body from him. Her hair drapes over the bare expanse of her back, and he can see the ridge of her spine, the small hollow of her lower back.

He stands, unbuttoning his shirt and walks towards her. He sees her tense as she hears his footsteps.

“Steve,” she says, a warning tone in her voice.

He pulls off the shirt, drops it around her shoulders. Army standard issue doesn’t account for men his size, and it’s always been very baggy on him. It falls around her shoulders, and she looks up at him, grateful, as she pulls her arms through the sleeves and does up a few of the buttons, covering herself. He sits down beside her as she adjusts the material until she’s comfortable. He focuses his attention on the spray of freckles across her kneecaps. He’d never noticed them before, even though she was often wearing shorts, very short shorts that made him wonder about the fashion styles whenever she was from.

“You okay?” he asks, his voice quiet.

“Yeah. I just… forgot and fell asleep. I meant to, you know, put something back on before I saw you,” she says, her head in her hands, mortified.

“Your guy not lend you a shirt this time?” 

He hates the way his voice sounds, the hard edge to it, and the way she flinches, just a little. A month or so ago, she was wearing a giant t-shirt with her school’s football team logo on the front and had shyly explained it belonged to the second string quarterback who she’d met at a sorority party. He didn’t ask for more details. They shared so much of their lives together, talked about everything, even the most mundane details of their days, but Darcy’s sex life was a topic that Steve willfully, stubbornly, refused to discuss. 

“Different guy,” she whispers, looking away, and the words burn in his gut. He doesn’t want to be jealous, he doesn’t like the way he feels possessive of her, like she belongs to him, but he  _ is  _ jealous and it burns deep. “I… ahh… well, I had a little too much fun at a party and brought someone back to my dorm.”

Her wrist is bare. She must have taken off the wide leather bracelet she always wore over it, and it’s the first time since his name appeared that he’s been able to see his signature. The sight of it is reassuring. It was really there, he hadn’t dreamed its existence. He takes her hand, pulls it into his lap and holds it there, between his two hands. Her fingers are cold.

“Steve, please don’t say anything,” she says, still refusing to look at him even as she squeezes his fingers between her own. “It’s not… it wasn’t anything... Look, sometimes you just need to get laid, you know?”

“ _ No, I don’t _ ,” he says. His voice is like acid, and the words escape his mouth before he can stop them. “There’s been no one for me since the day my name showed up on your skin.”

She turns to him, shocked. He’s a little shocked too. But he can’t stop himself.

“How do these other guys feel, being with someone else’s girl? Do they care that this is my name on your wrist? Or do you just hide it away so they can’t see?” he demands. 

Her hand is trembling in his and her face is turning red as her eyes start to overflow with tears, and he hates himself for what he just said.

He jumps to his feet. It’s his last night in this body, his last night before everything will change, and it’s the first time he truly feels small, like he is smaller than his body. He walks away, needs to get away from her, from his words, from himself.

But the grey space doesn’t really allow for that. He’s only gone a few feet, and it’s circled him back to her. She stands up, wiping her face and smoothing her hands down his khaki shirt. She looks young, standing in front of him in a man’s shirt with sleeves that are too long for her arms.

“Steve,” she says and then pauses as her voice breaks. She looks up and takes a deep breath before beginning again. “Steve, I didn’t know.”

He scoffs in disbelief, turning away. He knows he’s being cruel, but he can’t stop.

“You never said anything!” she cries out, lunging forward and grabbing his arm before he can stalk away from her. “When my Mark showed up, you didn’t even react, you just sat there like it didn’t mean anything.”

“Darcy,” he says, startled by the hurt in her voice.

“ _ I didn’t know _ ,” she says, her words ending in a sob. She’s fully crying now, something he hasn’t seen since she was three years old, the night they first met. “I thought you didn’t  _ want  _ me. You acted like you didn’t.”

He pulls her roughly to him, pressing her tight against his chest, locking his arms around her. 

“Hey now,” he says into her hair as she presses her wet face into the crook of his neck. “Darcy, how could I not want you? You are literally the girl of my dreams.”

“But you shouldn’t,” she says, pulling away. She’s shaking her head, stepping back from him and he wants to pull her back, but he keeps his fists clenched at his side. “I’ve been trying to avoid this, trying  _ so hard _ to avoid this.”

“Avoid what? Me? I’m your soulmate,” he says, his voice soft.

“You don’t understand, Steve. Or maybe you do and you’re just better at ignoring it. I know I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard to ignore it these past few weeks,” she says. She’s pacing, agitated. She’s scaring him.

“Darcy, talk to me. What’s going on?” he asks. She turns to him, and he can see the words on the tip of her tongue, can see the look on her face as she bites them back. Torn. Whatever she has to say, she knows it will change everything and she’s not ready.

Or maybe she is.

She clutches at the material of his shirt, pulling it away from her body, gesturing with it.

“Your uniform, Steve.” There is so much pain in her voice as speaks, and it rips through him. 

How long has she been hiding it from him, this pain? “ _ This _ is the uniform of a soldier fighting a war that happens  _ six decades  _ before I’m born. Even if you’re real, even if this isn’t all just a product of my dreaming brain and you  _ exist  _ and you  _ survive  _ one of the worst wars in history and I can actually find you in the real world, you’ll be - what, ninety years old?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, grabbing her forearms, pinning her in place. He’s desperate. Her words have made him desperate. “We will figure something out, Darcy. There is a  _ reason  _ we are here together.”

“There’s  _ nothing  _ for us but this stupid empty place! This is all we are  _ ever  _ going to have. Can’t you see this for it really is? We’re a goddamn  _ tragedy, _ ” she cries, twisting away. “Do you know what I hope for the most? Every morning when I wake up, the one thing I wish for? The name on your wrist, the one we can’t see? I wish, with everything in me, that it won’t be  _ my name _ .”

“You can’t mean that,” he says. It feels like she’s just punched him in the stomach.

“ _ Yes I can _ . Because if it is my name, you’re going to waste your life, waiting for me,  _ looking  _ for me. You already are! I may not even be real -”

“-You  _ are  _ real.”

“- and you would let your whole life pass you by! There’s been  _ no one  _ for you since your name became my Mark?” she cries, clutching his face between her hands. Her voice is raw, the pain almost too much for him to bear. “ _ Don’t you understand?  _ That’s exactly what I’m most afraid of, Steve.”

He touches her tear-streaked face, and her hands wrap around his wrist, holding his hand in place against her cheek.

They stare at each other for long moments, no other sounds except the beating of their hearts and the occasional sniff as they both attempt to get their emotions under control. He feels like he’s hanging off a cliff and all that is holding him in place is the very tips of his fingers, and as if his hold is starting to slip. She finally steps away, dropping his hand and wiping her eyes on her sleeves.

“They selected me. If everything goes according to plan, I should be heading to the front. Very soon, I hope,” he says, and she freezes. Her face is ghost-pale, all the blood seeming to drain away all at once.

“Promise me something,” she says, suddenly desperate, clutching at him. “You’re a big noble idiot, and when things get bad, I know you’re going to be one of those guys who throw themselves right into the middle of it.”   
  


“Darcy…” he says. Isn’t that the point of fighting?

“ _ Promise _ you won’t be a big noble idiot. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, you can’t know until you’re there. Let someone else be that guy. Be the smart guy who keeps his head down and  _ comes home _ ,” she says. Her words are like a soothing balm to the raw wounds they’d just inflicted on each other. Her big eyes are staring at him so intently, with so much love, and he wants to tell her everything he couldn’t say before - how he’s pretty sure knowing her has changed the course of his life, that he’s different than he would be without her, that it doesn’t matter if they never meet in the real world because she is more real to him than anything else ever could be.

But the words won’t come out.

So he kisses her instead, the way he’s always wanted to. Urgent, passionate, forceful. 

He captures her lips with hers, works his tongue into her mouth and presses his body against hers, arms wrapping around her to pull her hips against him. She reacts, her arms circling around his neck, clinging to him with a desperate force.

It’s a long, satisfying kiss, the wonderful friction of their lips moving against each igniting a need deep in his belly, the soft noise she makes in the back of her throat fueling his desire for  _ more _ .

He keeps his lips pressed to hers as they sink to their knees together, and then cups her face in his hands as he drags his lips lower, seeking the sensitive skin of her neck. He presses his tongue there and she gasps, throwing her head back to give him access.

Slowly he works his way downward with a trail of sloppy kisses that grow more frantic every time she gasps or makes  _ that  _ noise in her throat. His hands wander to her hips, pulling her close against his pelvis, making him gasp at the wonderful friction of her body.

She pulls back, her eyes glazed, her lips swollen and red.

“Tell me that this feels like a tragedy,” he says roughly, before kissing her again. His hands fumble for the buttons of her shirt and he pops them open, brushing the material aside as she climbs into his lap, and starts pulling the white t-shirt he wears up and over his head.

He leans forward, dipping her back as he presses his mouth to the smooth creamy skin of her breast, making her cry out. He shifts so that they’re rolling to the ground, her below him as he continues to focus on her breasts, mouthing over them as his hands caress the impossibly soft skin of her abdomen.

He wants her so badly, positively aches with it as she writhes against him, her thigh brushing against him, making his groan, and he knows that there is no mistaking how much he wants her.

He slips a hand inside her panties, watches her face contort with pleasure as he strokes her and he thinks it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. He’d give up his real life just to stay here with her, watching her face while he makes her feel good. She’s arching up against him, and he kisses her again as his finger teases her, sliding lower.

She makes a small noise that sounds too much like a cry of pain, and she shies away from his touch.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks breathlessly, his hand freezing in place as he looks down at her, worried. 

“No, sorry. I’m just a bit… sore, I guess… from… well, from earlier,” she says, her voice soft and hesitant.

“Did  _ he  _ hurt you?” Steve demands, the volume of his voice jarring. She cringes.

“No… it was just a bit… clumsy,” she explains with a pained expression, mortified. “We don’t need to stop…”

He sighs, and shifts his weight off of her, lying down on the ground beside her, panting.

She was right. The whole time, she was right.

“Steve, please,” she breaths, her voice full of sadness. “Please don’t pull away from me.”

He rolls back so he can see her face. His hand pulls the ends of his shirt - her shirt now - together, covering her, and he settles his hand warm on her stomach.

“You were right, Darcy,” he says. “I want you. So much. But not like this.”

Her eyes meet his, and he can see the heartbreak in her expression, but also the relief.

“Not here, not in a dream. I want you for  _ real _ . There is a good chance I  _ will _ spend my whole life waiting for you, looking for you. The real you. And I  _ am _ going to fight in a war, and I  _ will _ probably be an idiot about it. And I think… I think you’ve made me strong enough to do it.”

She pulls him close, and he lays his head down on her shoulder, his arm across her waist.

“I want there to be someone for you. Just because your name is my Soulmark, you’re not bound to it. I don’t want you to be alone,” she says and he closes his eyes, the idea of being with anyone but her too painful. 

“I’ll try, Darcy. That’s all I can promise.”

“Why does this feel like we’re saying goodbye?” she asks, her voice soft and raspy.

He doesn’t have an answer. The moments pass as he lays there, his fingers stroking her skin as he breaths in the moment, the moment where everything between them changes.

“All day, the only thing I think about is how long it is before I can fall asleep and start dreaming of you again,” she says, and the tightness around his heart is too intense, he has trouble breathing. 

He turns her wrist and brings the inner side, the part where his handwriting is a dark slash against her white skin, and touches his lips to it.

“Me too, Darcy.”


	7. Epilogue

It’s the last time he sees Darcy, the last time he goes to the grey space. He doesn’t know why - whether it was a side effect of Project Rebirth, or their final conversation when she’d released him from his bond to her - doesn’t know which act it was that broke them forever. Whatever it was, from then on, every night he falls asleep, and then he wakes up after a dreamless night. No more girl in the grey space.

He grieves the loss of her, misses her intensely. He stops sleeping for awhile when waking up every morning without dreaming of her became too hard, but then the war takes over his days and sleep finds him again.

He wonders if she was just a dream after all.

He keeps the locket she gave him, pins it to his undershirt almost every day. He draws a picture of her, a small detailed sketch of her face, of the wide smile she gave him so many times, he’d memorized it, and puts it in the locket with his mother’s name. He wants it safe, the image of her, in case the memories starts to fade.  _ Six decades. _ He can hold the memory of her close and safe for six decades.

But beneath the grief, there is also a shimmer of relief. He is free of her, free to feel. With his new body comes a lot of new female attention, unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, but when he thinks of the girl he misses every night, he remembers she let him go so he would find someone real.

Peggy Carter is real.

_ I want there to be someone for you _ . Her words echo in his brain when Peggy comes to find him, after he loses Bucky and is feeling lost and alone and crushed under the weight of his grief. Peggy is warm and real and genuine. When he kisses her, a frantic adrenaline-fueled moment that slows down time when their lips touch, he can see it all with Peggy. Their whole future maps out before him. Working together to save the world from Hydra, having a family and settling down to a quiet life. It’s everything he ever wanted, and it’s all possible.

He thinks of Darcy’s words again, as he holds Peggy’s picture close while he crashes the plane into the ice.

_ I tried, Darcy. I tried.  _ He wonders if she’ll ever know how hard he tried.

***

It takes him awhile after he wakes up from the ice before he notices. He’s disoriented, this world familiar but  _ wrong _ and unfamiliar in ways he has trouble comprehending. He’s angry and grieving the life he lost, the life that went on around him while he slept. It takes him a long time to notice, but he finally does and the whole world seems to shift.

On his wrist, in place of the faint silvery script he’d only ever seen in the grey space, was dark writing, solid and clear and tingling as he stares at it, able to read the name for the first time. He’s not sure if he should cry or scream or grab a knife and try to cut it out. 

It’s her name. Darcy. The girl he’d left behind in the grey space, her name is scrawled across his skin.

_ She was real. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all are still talking to me after that ending.
> 
> This will now be a series, and I’ll be posting the first chapter of part 2 once I’ve.. written it. Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting, I’ve enjoyed the discussion!


End file.
